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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27620797">Wastin' Away Again in Margaritaville</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paycheckgurl/pseuds/Paycheckgurl'>Paycheckgurl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Radio Kills the Video Star: Audio Codas [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Mpreg, Episode Tag: Big Finish: Expectant, Expectant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mpreg, Post-Season/Series 02, Swearing, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:13:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,419</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27620797</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paycheckgurl/pseuds/Paycheckgurl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack’s bad coping mechanism is agreeing to be a surrogate for an alien spawn baby. Gwen’s is at the bottom of a bottle.</p><p>Big Finish: Expectant from Gwen’s POV</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gwen Cooper &amp; Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper &amp; Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper &amp; Jack Harkness &amp; Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Radio Kills the Video Star: Audio Codas [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2116167</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wastin' Away Again in Margaritaville</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a companion piece to Big Finish: Expectant, but you shouldn’t need to listen to it to follow along. All you need to know is that it’s set very, very shortly after Exit Wounds, Gwen was Mrs. I’m Excusing Myself From This Narrative and apparently getting drunk in Tenerife/not ready to go back to work yet (“off screen” as it were), Jack agreed to get himself knocked up as a favor/bad coping mechanism, and Ianto was just Very Done with everyone. </p><p>Or: In which I take the overly silly MPreg audio and treat it seriously.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gwen Cooper was dealing with her grief at the bottom of a bottle. She’d seen shit, she’d lost two friends all at once. Two friends that in the too short time she’d known them had become her family. </p><p>So she ran away, grabbed Rhys and dragged him on the first holiday package she found, and began drinking an abundance of frozen drinks to forget. </p><p>She’d called Ianto a few times. At least once she’d been sober enough to hold a real conversation with him. He understood. He wasn’t pushing her to come back just yet; he knew she’d come back on her own terms. Once the desperate need to numb the knowledge that every trace of Owen had been blown to bits had lessened. The need to numb the sight of Tosh bleeding out, the echoes of her last words on the screen…</p><p>She missed Ianto. She missed him and Jack both, but she wasn’t ready to face them again. Wasn’t ready to strap her gun back on and continue on when the universe was this off kilter. But she also wanted her best friends, what was left of her family. She wanted them close where she could see them to ensure they wouldn’t slip away like...well like <em> they </em> had. Like Owen and Tosh. But not as much as she needed the pain to stop. Not as much as she needed the numbness. She wanted to be there but she <em> needed </em> to be as far as possible. It was a strange feeling and an obvious contradiction.</p><p>But during those fleeting moments when she had wits about her at least, she was rational enough to know she would be absolutely useless to Torchwood like this. It was best she stayed away until she could at least pretend to have a grip. Really, it was. </p><p>Margaritas, piña colada's, and bad beer were her life now. Crying against Rhys on a shitty hotel bed in a darkened room in Tenerife when the alcohol just wasn’t doing its job.Trying not to look as utterly broken as she was when other people on holiday tried to talk to her about the weather or their jobs or the little things she couldn’t be arsed to care about in the moment. </p><p>It was 8 PM and Gwen was two margaritas, two daiquiris, three piña coladas, and one pure shot of whiskey in. She probably shouldn’t have mixed whiskey and the tequila that was in the fruity girly drinks. She should have probably cared that she shouldn’t. </p><p>Her phone buzzed. Text message. Ianto. She took a peak at the words. </p><p><b>Ianto:</b> Jack went and got himself knocked up. </p><p><b>Ianto: </b>It’s not mine. </p><p>She looked down at the words. And then again. When they didn’t disappear the third time she read them, she dialed his number immediately. </p><p>“What the actual FUCK.” </p><p>“Hi Gwen, I see you got my message.” </p><p>Okay so logic was out the window and she was ...hmmm she was pretty out of it. Very out of it. But this was Torchwood logic and not regular logic. And well she’d dealt with this before. </p><p>“If it’s a nostravite egg the worst the singularity scalpel will do is kill him,” is what she meant to say. </p><p>She was fairly certain what she actually said was nowhere close to that and could not be understood by a normal human being because the singularity scalpel is hard to say. And so is Nostrovite. And hmmm, she thought. She should change bars so she didn’t get cut off. </p><p>Ianto Jones was not a regular human being however and seemed to understand her perfectly. </p><p>“Oh no. This was entirely consensual. He's a surrogate to an alien empress he’s got...history... with apparently.” </p><p>“He got knocked up by his bloody ex, I’m going to fucking kill him for you,” she slurred. </p><p>The fact Jack wouldn’t stay dead, and the fact that she wanted him alive, and okay, and <em> there</em>, was beside the point. Drunk Gwen was angry and was going to be offended on Ianto’s behalf. Because seriously, <em>what the fuck?</em>!</p><p>“I’ve been trying not to think about it like that,” said Ianto. “It's pretty clinical and more of a political thing from what I understand. And it's uhhhh, it's accelerated. It’s not like it’s nine months or anything. Short period of time. Be done by the time you’re back…” </p><p>“That sounds like denialll,” she slurred. Huh she normally wouldn’t have said it outright. She was <em> really </em> drunk. </p><p>Ianto seemed to take that as his cue to let his guard down a bit and just <em> vent. </em> “God this is so bloody weird and he didn’t even <em> ask me if I was ok with it</em>! I thought he ran off to grieve like a fucking normal person and he came back with a sodding bun in the oven!” </p><p>“I think I’m too drunk to deal with his bullshit,” she decided aloud.</p><p>“I wish I was,” said Ianto. </p><p>“The fuck was he thinking?” </p><p>“He wasn’t.” </p><p>“Slap him for me.” </p><p>“He’d enjoy that.” </p><p>“Sweiously,” she slurred. “He can go fuck him...can go fuck himself.”</p><p>“Nope, he’d definitely enjoy that. Also, god I don’t want to have sex with him while he’s knocked up with someone else’s...” he trailed off. “Oh for fuck’s sake I’m <em>not</em> okay with this.” </p><p>“No but seriouwwww...for serious, seriouswy deck him for me.” </p><p>A short while later she called Rhys and told him the news. He decided she was cut off, and picked her up from the bar in record time. Pretty fair reaction, really. </p>
<hr/><p>She called Ianto the next morning (really, the early afternoon) once she’d woken up, reread his texts, and determined that no, that wasn’t a strange drunken dream. </p><p>He picked up, but there was rift alert noise in the background and he told her to hang on while he checked it. She thought about Tosh sitting at her spot on the rift monitor and suddenly she remembered very clearly why she’d taken the sorry excuse for a holiday. She tossed her mobile aside. </p><p>Before she was completely aware of it she realized she was in the middle of breaking down crying in the too small hotel bath, her knees tucked in a fetal position against her frame. </p>
<hr/><p>She and Ianto were doing a bit of dance where they both missed each other desperately, but weren’t saying it outright. </p><p>She’d get the odd update about Jack’s impromptu pregnancy, over text. The Princess or Ruler or Queen Mother or whatever, had assigned Jack a midwife (designated babysitter), so at least he was being kept in line. She’d get the odd text from Ianto ranting about how Jonty the midwife couldn’t say his name correctly, or morning sickness, or more recent <em> hormones. </em>She had no idea how to respond to any of it, and found herself dialing Ianto’s number only to stop herself half way through.</p><p>She called Jack exactly once, only to tell him plainly “actually, fuck this” immediately after he said “hello”, and then hung up. If Ianto knew about it, he hadn’t asked. </p><p>Gwen looked down at the empty drinks in front of her. At some point Rhys would show up and drag her away before she could give herself alcohol poisoning or get herself banned from the hotel bar. She wondered how much of Jack Harkness’ Latest Bullshit she’d remember by the time he did. </p>
<hr/><p>It wasn’t long after that she would receive another text update. This one was longer than the others. </p><p><b>Ianto: </b>So Junior was successfully born. Well, Junior was born, anyways. I might have driven the car to the bottom of Cardiff Bay with myself and Jack inside. We had to make it to Jonty the midwive’s birthing ship while Jack’s ribs busted open, and while Jonty had unwittingly turned a health farm full of normal people on holiday into blood thirsty killers obsessed with the unborn ruler child. We didn’t die. The ship’s tractor beam got us and the birthing tech did the rest so anyways...baby. Yay. </p><p>The attached picture was the ugliest looking potato of a child she had ever seen in her life. She was still stuck on the bit about the car at the bottom of the bay. </p><p>That night she packed her bag. The grief and the desire to numb the pain was still very much there, but her desire to protect these two idiots from themselves was now much stronger. Cardiff called. <em>Torchwood</em> called. Whether she was ready for it or not. </p>
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